


White Noise

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, vague references to death and injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 14:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10336864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Silence is not empty — was not, and will not ever be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I make the assumption that Kate dies sometime in the 80s/90s. If Narita confirms she's still alive in 2003 then come to my house and murder me then delete this fic, please and thank you

 

The piano was polished and dusted more regularly than some of the pool tables, so that even at more than seventy years old it looked new, usable — as though not a day had passed since someone last sat down on the bench and played out a tune. 

In fact, a day had passed. Many days. _Years_. 

But it was polished so finely, so lovingly; its mahogany as deep a red as when the family had first purchased it. It was easy to attribute it to the same mysterious charm that graced the whole establishment. The Gandor casino was both outdated and firmly set in the present, and what should be old and withering in the world outside didn’t collect a speck of dust here. Regulars would come to the conclusion that the piano was frozen in time, just like the fresh-faced managers. 

_It must be something in the air._

The brothers would never look a day older, and the untouched piano would never gather dust, and time would pass. These were all facts of life to those who chose this place as their usual haunt, accepted without question as facts often were, even when they weren’t entirely true.

The truth was simpler than that. The truth was no elixir could keep a musical instrument looking new. No elixir, no charm, no enchantment — only a cloth and Keith Gandor’s dedicated hands. 

The brothers had their own theories on why he did this, night after night, but the consensus was that he was just trying to keep the damn place _clean_ , and that was that. They decided, wilfully, _that was that_. After a few too many shots of whiskey Luck might wax poetic that it was a roundabout way of affirming his humanity, that he worked until he ached, however briefly that ache lasted, so that he would not forget how the loss had felt. 

Luck was not pragmatic enough to understand that the explanation was simpler by far.

The piano had to be immortal, because the pianist was not.

 

* * *

 

 

The fall board was pried open for the first time in fifteen years by a pair of small hands with pink painted fingernails, and one of them chipped in the process but the girl said nothing about it. Rather than sit on the bench, she chose to climb up on the lid, and she stood, balancing precariously at the edge. It was not a great height, but relative to hers it would be a great fall. 

It would be a great fall, which did not matter because Claudia Walken never fell.

“It makes sense, Charon, it just _makes sense_ ,” she told her brother, tossing a knot of curls over her shoulder. “I can sing, so that means you’ve _gotta_  learn how to play. We’re a brother-sister duo! It just makes sense!”

Though no one spoke to protest her declarations, she continued to repeat them, with such pride and volume that it was a wonder she did not draw the attention of any of the adults in the room. Charon stared up at her for a long moment, barely blinking, then parted his lips to speak. 

“Can’t,” he responded briefly, voice barely cutting into the loud buzz of the busy casino. 

“There are no ‘ _can’t_ ’s in my world! If I say you can do it, you can do it.” 

His brow furrowed, but he did not argue; if Claudia said it, there was no _point_  arguing. 

“I’ll start singing, okay? And then you just...” A vague hand gesture, like fingers dancing across the keyboard. “Play some notes,” She turned her chin up to smile at the ceiling. “I promise it’ll work!” 

And because she promised —

Charon ran his index finger along the pattern of keys  —   _white, black, white, black, white_ — and he pressed.

 

* * *

 

 

“Like hell you won that hand.”

“Check his sleeves!”

“C’mon, guys, you saying I’m cheating? Me?”

“Yeah, asshole, _you._ ”

The man in question ran a hand through his grey hair, leaned back in his seat, and turned his grin to the next table over. 

“Hey, Keith! Bro, back me up here,” he called, in tones far more youthful than his appearance would let on. “Tell these guys that Felix Walken doesn’t _need_  to cheat.”

One of the players laid his cards down flat and looked over wordlessly, his naturally hard features creasing ever further. Felix nodded, gesturing for the other men and women to see. 

“He said: ‘That’s right! Real winners don’t need to cheat!’”

“...” 

Keith sighed, glaring at him until he gave a sheepish laugh and raised his shoulders. 

“Okay, okay fine, he didn’t say that. He actually said: ‘Felix isn’t that good a liar’,” he admitted, flinging a hand up to his chest and feigning pain. “That’s harsh, Keith. You’re hurting my feelings.”

“Serves you right for cheating, gramps.”

“Hey, _hey_ , didn’t you hear Keith? He said —”

“He didn’t say anything,” interrupted a woman in a leather jacket — a newcomer who had introduced herself as Emily. She rolled her eyes, but her skepticism did not seem to reach Felix. 

“Sure he did. Just because he didn’t _speak_  doesn’t mean he didn’t _say anything_. It’s like...” 

He trailed off.

It was only a small sound. 

The singing was a much bigger one, but it was not the _singing_ which drew the attention. It was the small, soft, distinctive sound; after being starved of music for so long, the air held onto the note with a vice grip. 

All eyes turned to the corner of the room, though for most it was little more than a cursory glance. The children were well-known in their small circle already, not because they were famous,but because they were _Walkens_ , and they practically lived here. To the regulars, a spectacle like this was nothing unusual; maybe they’d even been _asked_  to perform. A few whispers here and there told that it was _about time_  they started using that piano for something again.

Only two stares lingered longer. 

Felix’s gave first. He shifted his gaze away from his great-grandchildren to watch for change in Keith’s expression. There was — a change, something like a twitch of his eyebrow — but he knew what anger looked like and _that_  wasn’t it. He decided it was safe to laugh, though he might have laughed even if it wasn’t.

“She sure is a diva, huh? I keep saying she’s gonna —”

Keith stood, abruptly; not quite _kicking_  his chair back, but not taking the time to push it back gently either. It teetered, threatening to fall, and he was halfway to the other end of the room before someone reached out to steady it.  

People continued to bustle around him, and Claudia did not stop singing. Charon pressed a couple more keys, experimental and disinterested at the same time. They might not have noticed Keith at all if Felix hadn’t followed suit. 

But Felix _had_  followed, and was now lifting a still singing Claudia from the top of the piano. 

After a moment or two her song faded into humming. When he moved to set her down on the ground she swung her arms up around his neck and chimed: “Grandpa, clap for me! I remembered the whole song!”

She smiled, and he returned it a little broader, a little brighter. “You sure did! Tell you what, you let go of me and I’ll get _everyone_  to clap for you. Deal?”

“Deal!”

Her feet flattened against the floor, though only momentarily, before she began bouncing on them. Felix gave her a grin then turned to face the room, arms thrown out in a grand gesture. 

“A round of applause for the amazing Claudia and Ch —” he paused. 

 _Charon_. Right. 

Claudia demanded so much attention at times that it was easy for her brother to fade into the backdrop. He whirled around to look at the piano again, ready to pull the boy away from the old relic before Keith glared him down.  

The thing was, Keith wasn’t glaring daggers, and Charon wasn’t moving from the piano bench. 

The man had sat down beside him, and the two of them were staring mutely at the keys — not tense, just _quiet_. 

Felix let out a laugh, deep and booming. 

“The amazing Claudia and Charon Walken!”

 

* * *

 

 

_Just play some notes!_  his sister said, so he did. 

Contrary to popular belief, Charon _did_  have a mind of his own. It wasn’t that he followed Claudia because she knew better than him or because he couldn’t find his own way; he was a serious child, and if he chose to block her out he could be a logical one, too. It wasn’t that he had no other choice. It wasn’t even that he felt his life would be more interesting if he listened to her, bright and energetic thing that she was, instead of leading his own dulled down existence. 

He listened to her because it made her happy. That was it. She was his sister, after all — and the family he had taught him that family _meant something_. 

There was an invisible scar on his uncle’s forehead where a bullet which could have hit he or his sister splintered his skull. The scar wasn’t really there, and Charon never asked why. Maybe if Claudia had noticed the way the blood crawled back _she_  would have asked; Claudia liked honesty, she liked truth. The odds were, Keith would have told them — but Charon only needed _one_ truth, and he’d already found it. His family would always do right by him, and that meant he would always do right by them. 

Doing right by Claudia meant letting her lead. That was all. He never minded it; when he thought of his great-grandmother and his uncle, choosing the shadows over the spotlight felt like a wise decision. It had made them _strong_.

Charon knew — _of course he did_ — that they were not supposed to touch the piano. He may have been young, but he was more aware than his unaffected presence gave him credit for; as one who spoke so little, he was bound to hear everything that went on around him, even the things that were not spoken. The atmosphere, the careful way in which it was polished, the pointed way in which it was ignored — everything said _do not touch_. 

No one bothered to put a padlock on the cover, but most people understood that it was locked all the same; most people, but not his sister. The world was hers, as she would say, so she pried open anything, everything she got her hands on — no secrets, no knowledge, nothing was off limits to her. She seemed to think that she could never get in trouble, which translated to bravery both admirable and dangerous.

So he followed her — because she was brave, and brave people needed someone to watch their backs more than anyone else. They would never watch their own. 

He knew it was a bad idea, but she said _play some notes_ , and she was standing on top of the piano either way; if it was a choice between Claudia getting in trouble alone and the two of them getting in trouble together, he would always choose the latter. 

He pressed a key. He listened to the sound; it clashed with Claudia’s song. Her voice-box was a more practised instrument, and he failed to tune into it on the first try, or the second try, or the third. There was no particular flow to the notes he pressed, yet the room stilled around them. Charon noticed. 

Claudia _didn’t_ , so Charon changed his mind and decided he didn’t either. 

It was easy to let thoughts become background noise; they didn’t have to affect him if he didn’t want them to. He kept his eyes on the row of keys and continued to create sound. It clashed, and it clashed, until Claudia stopped singing; then he slumped back on the bench and created silence. 

He did not turn to look when Keith sat down beside him — not because he was ashamed, but because he could guess at the emotion written on his face without reading it. He could guess from the silence; some silence was cold and threatening, some silence was warm, and sometimes, rarely, silence was just _empty_. This silence was not any of those. 

This silence was very, very quiet, unnaturally quiet, as though it struggled to be silence at all.  

“Sorry.” 

The apology was a matter of course. He didn’t know why he was sorry. He didn’t know why the piano was sacred. He only knew that he was. He only knew that it _was_. 

For a moment the silence grew heavy, and Charon had no words bold enough to make a dent. It was the reverberating hum of a key being struck which sliced through it in the end.

He watched the hand on the piano, how it shook before it stilled, then looked up to the owner’s face. 

Keith had the sort of face that never looked happy. Charon would spend years being told that he had this sort of face, too. That didn’t matter here. 

Silence was rarely empty, and frowning faces could convey any number of emotions — and looking up at his furrowed brow and down-turned lips, Charon did not see ire. 

He nodded, and turned his head back to face the keys, knowing that Keith would do the same. No more sound passed between them. No more needed to.

 

* * *

 

 

When the erratic, confused round of applause died down, Felix settled back into his seat at the poker table. 

“Teach me how to play, grandpa!” Claudia, at his heel, made a few valiant attempts at scaling the table before plopping herself down in the now empty seat beside him; the number of players had shrunk by half since the earlier accusations, clearly unconvinced by the man’s assurances that the game had been fair. 

“Sure thing!” He nodded enthusiastically. 

“You can’t let a ten year old play poker,” Emily groaned. 

“I can do anything I want,” Claudia responded, though it was not so much defiance in her voice as _certainty_. “And I’m bored! Charon’s still talking to Uncle Keith.”

Several of the players glanced over to the piano at this, narrowing their eyes in confusion. 

“They’re not _talking_...”

“What was I telling you earlier?” Felix shook his head. “Don’t assume they’re not talking just ‘cause you don’t hear it.”

“You never even finished explaining that.”

“Oh, right,” he laughed, pushing onto the back legs of his chair. 

“It’s like... when you’re listening to the radio and you lose reception. You can’t hear anything but that doesn’t mean nothing’s being said, y’know? And somewhere someone who’s got better reception can hear it just fine.” 

He smiled to himself, and beside him Claudia’s head bobbed in agreement. 

“See, I’ve got decent reception.” He lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “Sometimes it’s all white noise, but that’s _something_ , right? Point is it’s never _nothing_ — and it’s pretty rude to say it is just 'cause your radio’s on the fritz.”

The rest of the table stared at him for a good minute or two, before someone snorted:

“Who still owns a _radio_  these days?”


End file.
